Everything to do with phonetics. Please note: comments not signed with your genuine name may be removed.

Friday, 3 September 2010

a nice ice

An anonymous commentator on yesterday’s blog (meant to be for the previous day) expressed not only disbelief at the suggestion that native speakers of English make a distinction between an aimən eɪm and a nameə neɪm but also dismay when native speakers (including me) insisted that we do.The picture above is taken from John Trim’s EFL practice book English Pronunciation Illustrated (CUP, 2nd edition 1975).Another commentator, going by the name of army1987, supplied a link to a Language Log posting (actually a follow-up to this one). Here you can find sound clips taken from a large spoken (telephone) corpus and test yourself on your ability to hear the contrast.

Measurements of segment duration show that final n, as in an ice (cream) is typically shorter in duration than initial n, as in a nice (day).

Impressionistically, I find the distinction to be relatively robust. OK, like many contrasts it may be obscured in rapid speech, particularly under less than ideal noise conditions; but, as I mentioned in a comment yesterday, I do remember being struck (and irritated) by a French colleague’s repeated mispronunciation of an L as ə ˈnel, which sounds like a knell rather than like what was intended. He was carrying over into English the French habit whereby final liaison consonants are regularly resyllabified with a following initial vowel: my standard example is les États-Unisle.ze.ta.zy.ni.

Historically, the distinction may presumably once have been less robust, judging by the etymology of adder and, in the other direction, of newt. (In the case of orange, from Sanskrit nāraṅga via Arabic nāranj, the reanalysis seems to have taken place in Italian, and the word then came to us via French already lacking the initial nasal.)

The existence of the distinction in contemporary English doesn’t stop us punning over the similarity.

Just to round off with a reverse example from Spanish that I enjoy very much.The word nitidez means clarity, vividness, sharpness, exactitude, precision.Now since the word is feminine, it is often-time referred to as una nitidez /unaˈnitiðeθ/ as in una nitidez brillante when trying to sell some schmuck an expensive TV set.Now, as I heard on Spanish Radio awhile back, it seems that many Spaniards understand that word as "anitidez" thanks to the fact that in Spanish there is no hiatus in these "an ice" cases and so /unaˈnitiðeθ/ easily becomes /unˈanitiðeθ/.I love the fact that a word meaning clarity and precision cannot be said with neither clarity nor precision.Not much of a punch-line, I know, but I haven't worked on my phonology stand-up in ages...

To me the difference is between n̩'aɪsˌhaʊs (syllabic n) and əˈnaɪsˈhaʊs. Thank you for this blog, John, particularly over the last couple of days: it has really made me look again at my assumptions. P.S. As a child of the sixties I agree with Sil: eɪʒn

Very interesting about the pronunciation of Asian. I never knew that was a pronunciation. As for "a nice" vs. "an ice", I'm pretty sure I don't make this distinction. This seems supported by the fact that in the Language Log post I was unable to guess what the syllabification was with greater than chance frequency.

This tendency to have final liaison consonants regularly resyllabified with a following initial vowel is characteristic of much of Scottish and Irish pronunciation.Metanalysis caused by frequent ambiguities of these kinds have given us surnames like Nash, Noakes, Nalder and Noad and words like newt, nickname, nuncle and nonceword. They also account in reverse for our modern forms of adder, aitchbone, auger, apron & umpire and the familiar name forms Ned & Nell. Other Germanic languages have such forms eg Flemish has a name parallel to our Nightingale that doesnt begin with n.

From what I remember, I'm not sure John agrees with you one that - I'm pretty sure I remember reading somewhere (in 'syllabification and allophony'?) that he considers linking R to be in the coda. And I often hear myself and others hesitating and leaving an /r/ dangling before deciding that what is to follow won't begin with a vowel after all.

...and the proof of that is the minimal pairs we had two or three days ago, e.g. more icemɔːr aɪs (syllable-final r) vs. more ricemɔː raɪs (syllable-initial r). Linking r is in my view always syllable-final. The defining characteristic of a non-rhotic pronunciation is not that /r/ must be syllable-initial, but that /r/ is always followed by a vowel sound.

If "marry" is syllabified as /'mær.i/, then you seem to violated the constraint that "phonotactic constraints on syllable structure (as established with reference to monosyllables) are not violated". Even postulating that linking/intrusive R is in the syllable coda, there are still no examples of monosyllablic words ending in /ær/.

If, on the other hand, "marry" is syllabified as /'mæ.ri/, then another phonotactive constraint has been violated, since there is no monosyllablic word ending in /æ/.

Shouldn't we conclude from this that the phonotactic constraints on syllables cannot be the same as those on monosyllabic words?

Shouldn't we conclude from this that the phonotactic constraints on syllables cannot be the same as those on monosyllabic words?Indeed (also ʒ can occur in polysyllables but, excluding loanwords, not in monosyllables, etc.). And IMO this would be a better justification for allowing /petr.@l/ than "you can get /tr/ in matter in phrases such as matter of fact".

Yes garage is ˈgærɑːʒ or ˈgærɑːdʒ for me. Lots of people in Briatain say ˈgærɪdʒ, however. But I'm pretty sure most people say ˈbærɑːʒ or ˈbærɑːdʒ for barrage. John gives both in his LPD, and I suspect that British non-RP speakers generally follow suit.

That reminds me of the time (anecdote alert!) that I visited a church in Edinburgh. After the service I was telling a local woman that I had a week off, for which she offered to fetch a glass of water.